mission ♔ somewhere between our hearts and minds

[rationalizes]

♬ We Are Mice - Azure Ray

WHO || Gar, Kat, Mark, Dumage, Martha, Myri, Buffy, Sven, Spike [Closed]
WHAT || Following up on the Nightscape incident / Jade
WHERE || Chicago.
WHEN || Mon March 12th - Mon March 19th | BACKDATED
HOW || Actionspam

Welp.  That was a wild and crazy time.  So the Eternal Jade was... actually a person, Buffy tried to kill Spike, Sven snared himself a pet displacer beast, Mark and Myri got in a car accident, and Des stole their lead away.  Go team failboat go.  

The Saturday after the events at Nightscape was spent healing up those who needed it and piecing together everyone's memory of the incident: Spike and Buffy luckily remembered everything that had occurred, for now, at least. The singer, Jade, had given them a little bit of information that they could begin looking into for now: that she was being pursued by a church called the Brotherhood of the Enlightenment. On Sunday, Gar called Des to find out whether she was still safe, and learned that she currently being held for questioning by the Hoffman Institute.

Which merited a big unison 'crap' from the team - who had been trying to keep her out of their hands in the first place. Gar, however, didn't see this as a total bust. After all, she was ideally placed to learn anything that they might get out of the girl. Because of this, she returned to her undercover position on Monday and spent the next week spying on the proceedings. Her reports have not been particularly helpful, however. The girl - Eterna Jade - claimed to have no memory of anything remotely tied to the Talisman, and didn't seem to understand what the church wanted with her, or why her name was connected to the talisman's mythology. She couldn't answer most of the questions put to her, actually, claiming to be from the Shadow World recently, and remembering nothing but coming here and living at the club, ever since, which she says was given to her. Though she insists that she is the owner, she appears to have very little information about its daily operations, leaving that to a team of executives she calls the "Dreammakers". When asked, she cannot even name any of the men on this team. She's acted generally sullen and uncooperative, but Dr. Hoffman seems to have concluded, to his own frustration, that she isn't lying either.

She wanted to return to the club shortly after being detained, but the Doctor insisted they make certain it was safe first, and has, indeed, been monitoring the building and Brotherhood movements, to try and make certain that they aren't still after her, or hunting her down. There's been no evidence to suggest that they're looking for her currently.

In the meantime, the Knights have been working on researching more about the club, Jade, and the Brotherhood. And Buffy went on a personal crusade to hunt down information about the man they let take Jade to the Institute in the first place: Desmond Descant, who claimed to know Wynn. (Threads below!)

It's on Monday, March 19th, that Gar comes home excitedly from her job to draw something wrapped in cloth out of her bag and asks everyone to gather around. (Thread below!)

[[Various threads will go up below: as always, pick and choose what interactions you want your character to be involved in. Please make research checks where indicated! Also, you're free to make your own threads for general socializing!]]

Comments

Researching the Brotherhood of the Enlightenment

[shootfirst]

[Come pull up a chair and a Research check and help Kat find out what she can about these guys.]

Alright, let's see what we can dig up about crazy cult o'clock.

[witchwoman]

[Myri still is not entirely too confident with her reading skillz, but she's most comfortable with Kat and doesn't mind asking for assistance... if it isn't too much of a bother, that is. She sits beside Kat and looks for the first thing that she can pour herself over.]

I had hoped to never deal again with zealots.

[This is Myri being slightly nervous about running into Moncriith. And her distraction shows with a Research check of only 7]

[shootfirst]

Unfortunately, we get a lot of those around here. More annoying than your regular old bad guys since they back it up with truckloads of dedication.

[She reads off a site, letting Myri read over her shoulder]

Ok, so it says here that the Brotherhood "supports the true spirit of God's message to man" blah blah blah "that he has dominion over this earth and its creatures."

[witchwoman]

[Myri follows along as best she can]

It doesn't seem to be a very original premise.

[shootfirst]

Probably not... unless you do some reading between the line. [She swaps to a different site] They're Shadowhaters. A whole church of them. Who believe that "man is rightfully master of anything non-human on this earth". They're slavers.

[witchwoman]

[Myri's jaw works, but no sound comes out.]

You mean to say that they believe we... That is, those of us who came through the mist... [She gulps]

[shootfirst]

That's the general gist, yeah. They might not figure it extends to Shadowkind humans, but then again it's hard to know where psychos draw the line.

[witchwoman]

[She chews on her bottom lip]

Sir Kat, we have to stop them.

[shootfirst]

I'm right there with you on that, but the problem is churches like this are perfectly legal. So unless we catch them doing something, they're pretty damn hard to shut down.

[She screws up her face] Luckily, attempted kidnapping might be a good place to start. Especially if we can figure out exactly what they wanted out of Jade.

[witchwoman]

Can we do that? I'm sure they don't have information like that just out there for anyone to find.

[shootfirst]

Well, I didn't mean that they probably have it outlined on their web site. But there are other ways to figure out what the baddies are after.

[witchwoman]

[Don't act like these things are obvious, Kat! Some poor people (named Myri) don't know better.]

Oh... like what? Other than trying to get information from the priests themselves... [Her expression says that she is not fond of this idea.]

[shootfirst]

Well, we could always poll one of their thug monkeys, but I doubt they'd know the whole scoop. So looking into what they've been pouring money into might help.

[witchwoman]

You can trace such a thing?

[shootfirst]

The one big plus to living in a world without paper money or coins dominating most of our buying and selling is that everrrrything leaves an electronic trail.

[witchwoman]

[Myri just nods, but also scoots closer because she is interested in how such a thing works.]

[shootfirst]

[Good luck keeping up. Kat's fingers fly across the keyboard, windows pulling up, tabs switching around, multiple programs running at once as her eyes whip across the screen] Just... gonna take... a little cracking...

[witchwoman]

[Myri's been watching pretty much everyone she can on the laptops and phones. And she asks a lot of questions when things aren't so... intense and mission-y. So with an Intelligence check of 19 for comprehension, she doesn't exactly understand how or why Kat is doing everything, but she isn't completely lost. Having such a techno-savvy Knight may be helping more than either of them thought it would.]

[shootfirst]

[ Kat's eyes narrow as she starts slowing down, pulling up long lists of amounts and business names. ]

Ok, so this definitely registers on the weirdness scale.

Why would a church be getting donations from a record label? [ She frowns at the computer for a long moment, before seeming to remember Myri. ] Oh, a record label's like... a business that sells music to people and makes a bajillion dollars doing it. It looks like they've been making private donations to the Brotherhood of the Enlightenment for months now.

[witchwoman]

[Myri's face screws up in concentration and confusion]

So they're like minstrels? Perhaps they have formed a partnership. In my world, musicians travel from town to town, spreading stories for entertainment.

[shootfirst]

I don't really get what would be so entertaining about spreading stories of enslaving Shadowkind. But it's a theory, at least.

[witchwoman]

You'd be surprised the sort of things people will listen to if a person is saying them the right way.

[shootfirst]

Hmm.

[ She mulls on that, as she clicks a few more things, and then leans forward, pointing her finger at the screen ] There's one name that keeps popping up on these checks from Nova. [ She glances at Myri. ] That's the name of the record company.

Some guy named Chad Becksworth.

[witchwoman]

Maybe we can start with him? Is there any way to find out who he is? [Myri has certainly seen people questioned and knows that it's not always the most harmless of activities. But she also knows her Knight and figures that if Kat wants to ask someone a few questions, she'd do it in a way that would get the job done.]

[shootfirst]

The power of Big Brother. [With a smile, she tap-tap-taps her way through a search engine and pulls up a TON of info and articles.] It looks like this guy is way famous. In music circles, at least. Here. [And she will read out loud the most relevant article to Myri]